Silver
by Jezunya
Summary: 5yrs after the War, and only 3 since the end of her term in Azkaban, Ginny is trying to move on with life. But life has a funny way of sticking in one place, espcially when it comes to fellow exconvicts, like one Draco Malfoy...
1. Times

Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ belongs to JKRowling, Warner Brothers, and anyone else who has rights to it, but not me. /sigh/

A/N: Well, this fic kinda came at me out of the blue the other day... Draco/Ginny, of course, but will be quite a bit darker than what I usually write... o.o;

Erm... I didn't really know what to call this, and right now it is titled 'Silver' – but that will just be the title of chapter 1 if I think of a better title for the overall fic... (I seem to be doing that a lot lately... -.-;)

Thanks to my sisters for beta-ing this for me! n..n

Listening to: _Starry Starry Night_ by Don McLean (I dunno... I was listening to it, and it fit... /shrug/)

"**Silver"  
by Jezunya**

**Chapter 1 - Times**

It was a strange place to meet the love of your life. Not that she would have called it love then. _He_ probably wouldn't have called it anything at all. There was no relationship, no connection, nothing. They just happened to have cells across from each other. Nothing significant about that.

He was already there when she was sentenced. His trial had been much quicker, more cut-and-dry. There were no questions of whether his actions had been voluntary or not, unlike hers, and he'd had no family or friends to drag his trial out, to fight the sentencing tooth and nail – unlike her.

She had been terrified and horrified when she'd been brought in, but mostly she'd been resigned. That was perhaps what helped her most to keep her sanity during those long two years – she had resigned herself to her fate, and to the fact that, no matter how her family and friends tried to fight it, she was, indeed, a Death Eater.

She didn't try to fight as the dementors slowly drained her of all the joy she'd ever known. There wasn't much left in her by that point, anyway. They took her memories – oh, they were still _there_, but they were devoid of any color, of any emotion. They became just meaningless events in the long, winding path that had led her to her dank little cell in Azkaban.

She didn't try to hold on to anything; just let the dementors do what they did best. That was what saved her sanity. That and his eyes.

She often wondered if he managed to keep a hold of his own sanity. She thought so, but sometimes she wasn't sure. Sometimes, she would wake in the middle of the night to find him staring at her through the bars of his cell. He had looked most insane at those times, with the moonlight glinting in his silvery hair and eyes, giving him a kind of other-worldly glow. Another time, the sight would have terrified her. But sitting there in the pits of the dreaded wizard's prison, she didn't feel much fear. So she just stared back, because there was nothing else to do.

It was several months into her sentence – the better part of which had been spent simply sitting and blinking owlishly at each other – when he suddenly opened his mouth, and spoke.

"What are you doing here?"

There was the barest hint of the old sneer in his voice, but mostly it just sounded hollow and raspy.

She'd watched him for a while longer, before answering him with a question of her own.

"Why are _you_ here?"

The sound of her own voice surprised her more than his speaking had. He, on the other hand, just lowered his eyelids, the silver eyes darkening to a stormcloud grey.

"I meant to kill you."

She nodded, sighing. "I know." She'd thought it was him when the attack came, and hearing it from his own lips convinced her more fully than any Ministry verdict ever would have.

He raised a pale eyebrow, his face twisting into something that was almost a glare. "You didn't answer my question."

She half-nodded again, drawing a deep breath as her eyes fell closed. The prison air was frigid in her lungs.

He had tried to kill her.

She opened her eyes, staring at him again.

"You know why I'm here."

888

Ginny snapped awake, her body barely even twitching and her breathing remaining in the deep, even breaths of sleep. After a few moments she let her eyes slide open.

The wall in front of her was grey, but not the same grey that she had come to expect when waking. This was simply a darkened blue, a shadow of the paint adorning her bedroom walls. Not really grey at all.

She squeezed her eyes shut, grimacing to herself and forcing her body to relax. Or rather, forcing it to wake up – there was no need for the instinctive fake-sleep here, just as there was no need for her to expect to see grey all around her when she opened her eyes. That part of her life was over, _had_ been over for the last two years. No, three years now. Her eyes found the calendar above her desk, the number in the box for today's date circled in plane black pen, without any sort of explanation. She didn't need an explanation to remind her – she knew all too well what today was.

Five years ago today, she'd started her term in Azkaban, and just two years after that she'd been released.

She felt her eyebrows settling into a glower as she stared at the innocent black mark on the calendar. She wouldn't get any peace today, she knew, because everyone assumed that she 'shouldn't be alone at a time like this' as her Mum always put it. No one ever thought that maybe, just maybe, she _wanted_ to be alone for a time like this.

She didn't know if she could handle having her family walking on egg-shells around her again this year. They seemed to think that she was made of glass, that one false word would break her to pieces. She smiled humorlessly to herself as she sat up, the covers falling off from around her shoulders. Prison didn't make you softer or more delicate. It made you harder – you had to be stronger, or you would break. And if she hadn't broken in Azkaban, then nothing her family said or did would break her now.

She dressed in the dark, as always reluctant to turn on any sort of light or lamp, and kept her back studiously turned to the calendar over her desk, where the black circle around the date watched her like some great, accusing eye. Of course, having her back to the desk had its drawbacks as well, namely in the form of the window on the opposite wall.

She felt her hands slow on the buttons of her blouse as she watched the silvery morning light filtering in onto her bedspread, bringing with it her dream from the previous night. It hadn't really been a dream per se, but a memory, most likely brought on by the coming anniversary of her sentencing and subsequent release. She frowned at the silver light, determinedly going back to dressing. She would not think about him. She _would not_.

Still, even thinking that she would not think about him brought her thoughts back round to him. Everything in there had been grey, varying from the pale grey of the dementors' rotting flesh to the dark, almost black grey of the other inmates' hair or clothes. But everything had been grey, in one form or another.

Everything except him.

_He_ wasn't grey. Oh, his skin had the same ashy pallor as the rest of them soon enough, and his eyes and cheeks became sunken and drawn like all the rest, but there was always something... something _silvery_ about him, rather than plain grey. Like some kind of light or life that would not disappear, even in the face of the dementors' wrath. Something that would not let him fall into despair, would not let him simply forget who he was and how he had gotten there, like so many prisoners of Azkaban did.

She realized then that her hands had stopped brushing her hair and that she had begun to stare off into space again. Growling angrily at herself, she wrenched the brush through her coppery mane, determined _not_ to think about him. She had just thrown her coat onto her shoulders and pulled her front door open to step out onto the porch in front of her first-floor flat, when her resolution to get through the day without thinking about him was, once again, shattered.

She could only stare down at the headline on the newspaper, sitting innocently on her doorstep where the owl must have dropped it, and at his picture glaring out at her as he was jostled on either side by security wizards from Azkaban.

She felt her face pale, her heart rate quickening as she scanned the words written in bold on the front page.

"DRACO MALFOY UP FOR PAROLE."

8-888-8

A/N: Um... review..?


	2. The Prisoner of Azkaban

Disclaimer: If I owned _Harry Potter_... well, I wouldn't be writing _fan_fiction, for one thing. JKRowling owns & writes it, I write fanfiction and make no profit off it whatsoever, and everyone's happy/pained smile/

A/N: Yay! Chapter 2! Whoo! n..n OC introduced in this chapter, so beware! (And he's not even a very likable OC... -w-;)

"**Silver"  
by Jezunya**

**Chapter 2 – The Prisoner of Azkaban**

Mercurius let his eyes roll lazily over the slowly passing landscape beyond the window of his carriage, comfortably nestled into the well-cushioned seat that was charmed to make any bumps in the road or bounces of the carriage virtually undetectable. He smiled to himself, watching the tall, stark building of Azkaban gradually shrinking in the distance.

"I always miss it, when I leave," he remarked, half-wistfully. His eyes slanted a look over at the other occupant of the carriage, watching with calculated glee for any kind of reaction. "It's a sort of home away from home, I suppose. But then, you know _all_ about that."

The man's face didn't so much as twitch, the pale eyes just continuing to stare out through the greasy locks. His form jumped and lurched with the movement of the carriage, as the simple wooden board attached to the back wall of the carriage that he sat on was not nearly as accommodating as Mercurius' own padded seat. He felt his grin widen as he watched the prisoner on the other side of the bars, ignoring as always the Aurors stationed on either side of the make-shift cell. Beastly bunch, Aurors.

"You're not much of a talker, are you? I'm not really surprised, most prisoners aren't, but sometimes, just sometimes, you stumble on one that just won't shut up." He rested his head in his upturned hand, stretching out luxuriously on the seat. Eyeing the captive carefully, he spoke again.

"Your father was one of those. Arrogant as they come. We couldn't get the man to quit yammering on about the injustices of imprisoning full-blooded wizards, and how the Dark Lord would have us all murdered, slowly and painfully, for standing against him." He spit on the floor to show what he thought of that, but couldn't contain a gleeful smile at the thought of just how one might murder someone slowly and painfully.

"All high and mighty for nothing, your father," Mercurius said conversationally, leaning on an elbow to look out the window again. "Went on and on about how the Dark Lord would see us all hanged. The Dark Lord this and the Dark Lord that... And then what's he do? He goes and gets himself killed by a dumb seventeen year old kid. The Boy Who Lived became the Boy Who Killed." He let out a nasty grin and was rewarded with a very slight, subtle pinching of the prisoner's face. In another, healthier face, it might have been a narrowing of the eyes, but the prisoner's eye sockets were too sunken for that, the face too gaunt and stretched to do more than just pinch up.

"That's what I don't understand about this whole mess," he said, sitting up slightly to assume a more thoughtful expression. "Why on earth would they let out someone who is so obviously a danger to the public, or more specifically to their precious Harry Potter? I mean, honestly, I wouldn't even bet on how quickly you'll find Potter and exact revenge for your master on him. What on earth could the Ministry be thinking..?" He tapped his chin with one long finger for a moment or two, before shrugging and sitting up, looking cheerful.

"Well, that's not really my problem, now is it?" he chirped, grinning brightly at the prisoner. "After all, if you go and commit a crime again – which of course _no one_ would want, yes? – then you just get to come back here to my humble little house in Azkaban, and you can be sure there won't be any chance of you leaving...ever...again."

He grinned as the prisoner just assumed a rather tired expression and turned his head to look out the barred window to his right.

Mercurius sat back in his seat again, one hand fiddling idly with the chain of his pocket watch. This prisoner hadn't received the Kiss, at least that he was aware of – and there'd certainly be trouble if he'd missed it somehow – but he barely rose to any kind of bait. It was true that most prisoners didn't talk much, but most of them _would_ respond to casual baiting like that. But then, most of them were also crude ruffians, without even half a brain working. This one, however – he was smart. Maybe too smart, since it seemed his time in Azkaban had broken him already. That was what happened when you tried to think too much – the dementors ripped everything out of you, and it left you broken and half-dead.

He pursed his lips, watching the prisoner through the bars. This one had been the prize of his collection for the past six years, and he was going to be sorely sorry to see him go. It seemed all his smart little Death Eaters were slowly slipping out on some Ministry order every year or so.

The prisoner just stared out the window, grey eyes flat and emotionless. The passing country outside was grey, the inside of the carriage was grey, the light streaming past the clouds in the sky was grey. There was supposed to be something other than grey when he looked around, but he couldn't quite remember what. The carriage jolted, and then he did remember something.

His name was Draco.

888

It was the end of the day already. She didn't know how it happened, but somehow the times when she really wanted to be left alone always seemed to fall on the days when she'd promised to show up for one of the weekly family dinners at her parents' house. She thought maybe the cosmos were mocking her, but she just sucked it up and continued on down the path through the garden to knock loudly on the back door of the house. She only stood for a moment or two, reveling in the strange quiet of the frosty autumn day, before the door was flung open to reveal her mother, looking red in the face and hastled.

"Oh, Ginny dear, thank goodness- Come on, quickly, come quick!" Ginny only raised her eyebrows slightly as her mother pulled her bodily inside. The kitchen of the Burrow was just as she always remembered it – small, full of old cooking utensils and battered keepsakes, and absolutely brimming with family members.

The customary Weasley family dinner was even more noisy and chaotic than usual, a kind of distraught tension hanging in the air above everyone's heads. Ginny felt her interest pique at the sight of several of her brothers (and Harry, the honorary Weasley brother) clustered around the evening issue of the _Prophet_, talking in loud, angry voices.

"Oh, it's just dreadful dear, just dreadful," Molly was saying, pulling her attention back to her.

"What is?" Ginny asked, frowning and fingering the shoulder strap of her bag. "Has something happened?"

"Oh- Oh, you haven't heard," Mum said, looking up at her with wide eyes.

"Heard what?" Ginny asked, frowning further.

Molly opened her mouth to respond, her expression showing her desire to break the news to her delicate little daughter gently, whatever it was. Ginny had just managed to stop herself from stamping her foot and growling 'Out with it, woman!' when a paper was shoved fiercely under her nose.

"This!" Ron snarled, holding the news up to her face.

Ginny blinked several times before it dawned on her just what it was she was looking at.

Draco. Draco Malfoy, staring sullenly out of the paper. He didn't move much, just glancing furtively around every so often, his un-manacled hands clenching open and closed, as if he didn't know what to do with them.

Her eyes widened, then found the headline at the top of the page.

"MALFOY SET FREE."

There was a beat of shocked silence as they let her process the news before she spoke. "Wh... What is this?" she asked hesitantly, her eyes already scanning the article.

"It's exactly what it looks like. They've let him out," George said, frowning.

Ginny glanced around, then voiced the question that she knew they were all expecting, even though she didn't really care about the answer herself. "Why?"

"Don't exactly know," Percy said from his seat at the far end of the kitchen table, pushing his glasses up his nose. He watched his younger brothers shoot him some sneering glances, then go back to their discussion, his mouth a tight line.

After the War, Percy had managed to make amends with his Mother and two older brothers, though his relations with their Father were still cool, and sometimes down-right hostile with Fred, George, and Ron. Ginny was perhaps the only one he didn't completely look down his nose at, and she often wondered if on some subconscious level he thought of her as being in the same situation as he was – having done something terrible, something almost unforgivable in their family's eyes, but having been able to come back and rejoin the Weasley clan and 'good' Wizarding society. She made her way over to him, taking a seat in the empty chair beside him.

"They're making an awful fuss about all this, really," Percy sniffed pompously, though the glance he sent her was friendly. "Personally, I don't like him any more than anyone else does, but I'm sure my higher-ups have their reasons for releasing him."

Ginny raised an eyebrow at him, leaning in slightly as the cluster of boys grew louder in their squabbles. "What do you mean?"

Percy dusted off his robes for a moment, trying to seem casual as he spoke. "Oh, it was all very hush-hush, classified and all that."

"What he means is that they told him to keep his big ugly nose out of things that didn't concern him or he'd regret it," Fred called, grinning when Percy went red in the face.

"Well, really," Percy muttered, glaring and pushing his spectacles back up his nose as Fred turned away again.

"They wouldn't tell you?" Ginny asked, frowning.

"No, they wouldn't," Percy said, tight-lipped as ever when he had to admit things didn't go just the way he would've liked. "Apparently, it's classified beyond even Senior Clerks such as myself." He puffed out his chest a little as he again reminded the room of his recently attained promotion.

"What about Ron and Harry?" Ginny continued, glancing over at the loud cluster of men. "They would know about this sort of thing in the Auror department, wouldn't they?"

Percy shook his head, adjusting the cuffs of his robe and looking slightly insulted that his position was brushed off so casually. "They're just as confused as the rest of us. Apparently, it's just between the Minister of Magic and a few of his closest advisors." He sniffed, trying the look all-important again. "But I'm sure they have very good reasons for whatever they're doing."

Ginny just nodded, frowning to herself, and couldn't have been happier when her mother called her over to help cook dinner.

888

He stared up at the dark, sprawling building, letting the dust settle from where the Ministry carriage had driven away before pushing open the huge rusted front gate. The hinges protested loudly, the sound echoing off the walls of the Manor and fading into the empty grounds round about.

He walked slowly up the drive, his eyes never leaving the dark windows and black stone walls of the building. It had been more than eight years since he had seen it. Probably not since the summer his mother had died, the summer before his seventh year, just before the War broke out in earnest.

He stopped halfway to the house, not even shivering when the cold October wind blew past, whipping his robes around him. His face twitched and he finally tore his eyes away from the stark old building to look down at his left forearm.

The design stood out dark against his pale skin, paler than it had ever been before Azkaban. It was the mark of his people, the pride of his family; it was what had gotten him sent to prison in the first place.

He clenched his fist and dropped his arm, something that may have once been a smile pulling its way onto his face.

"Well." His voice was raspy, barely a whisper because of disuse over the past years. He turned his eyes back up to the dark building. "It seems I'm finally home."

8-888-8

A/N: Bwah, sorry, short chapter... This just seemed like a good place to end it... Hopefully, I'll be able to start getting back to my usual length of 6-8 pages instead of just 3 -.-;; /sigh/

Review please!


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